Sunday 22 September 2013

3 New Poems

Dancing At The Roisin

I was watching the rising pint explosions as fireworks in miniature,
amber light of the wax table candle, it was minutes
in memory's depth, feeling eternal beneath the
sable sway of the very moment itself.

Dancing to the Little Green Cars song, I was ready
to be embarrassed, ready to be risky,
I was ready to be heart-broken by night's end,
ready for whatever it was that came next.

You held in the moonlight's swaying supple
between Quays and the canal, Portland
accent and DC manner set as drunken tables,
romantic cliches and silence in equal disdain.

The Impermanence of Time

You fell as grains of sand, coarse-ground salt
sipping through lined fingers bathed in off-brand
Aldi cider, always a clumsy kind of slipping
through, always a regretted few words swallowed.

I could watch gracefully hung clocks for guidance,
visions of Berlin and Belfast passing by train car
in your absence, cold light of computer codes,
soft morning's sun reflecting pavement the same.

Lacking complaint, struggled compliment, stepped separate
to the mid-morning market queues, the fishmonger
and the falafel truck spurt-splattered under tarp rain,
the half-light of Irish grey same as I.

Approx. 8 Hours

If I were waking up meaningless, the same confusion
and hollow-emptied conch shell numbness every time
flitting fire light bug from echoed lampshade skin
to the paltry pale hosts of autumnal snowfall,

would you be still as Winter's end?

If you were woken in cold clamor stupor,
teeth glowing wolf's tone in the curtain cast moonlight,
head full of chest drawers all sorted and folded,
still some empty place left in shadow,

would I be some cause of half-regret?

If we looked out on Galway Bay, saw the waves
tidal toss tumbling the wooden sail ships, world's
end coming quick as Summer's soon defeats,
measuring cups could flood over in salty brine, but

would we know both Ottawa and Albany were never really that far?


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